Near-lossless complexity-scalable embedded compression algorithm for cost reduction in DTV receivers

AbstructThis paper presents a novel complexityscalable technique t o reduce t h e memory costs of a n M P E G 2 decoder by a factor of four t o six, by recompressing t h e Ia n d P-reference pictures prior t o motioncompensated reconstruction. T h e proposed scheme feat u re s some unique characterist ics, like robustness for multiple encodings and high memory a n d memorybandwidth reduction factors. At t h e same t ime, t h e near-lossless quali ty obtained is preserved, independently of t h e rat io between t h e input and display resolution a n d transmission/storage bi t ra tes , because no interference between t h e memory reduction a lgor i thm a n d t h e M P E G 2 decoder occurs. D u e to t h e inheren t scalabil i ty of t h e presented a lgor i thm, trade-offs between memory, silicon costs or over-all sys tem costs, and image quality can be easily made. T h e proposed embedded compression a lgor i thm can also be used for memory and memory-bandwid th reduction in a l ternat ive syst ems , like video coding ICs (e.g. MPEG-4) a n d memory intensive image processing ICs (e.g. de-interlacing a n d 100-Hz conversion).